I'm so sad I missed this... will there be one next year ?
I had a very different post planned to answer this with, but today I made peace. Here’s the truth, anon:
God hated this gift exchange.
Out of 43 signups, two people were affected by huge, awful natural disasters. That is 4.6%. I don’t know what the odds of that are, but I figure they are pretty freakin’ low.
That is not even starting on the people with smaller real-life interference that made it impossible for them to post before the deadline, which completely scuttled my intention of having this tied up before the end of the holidays. That is not even starting on the emails I sent that persistently went to spam or straight-up disappeared. That is not starting on the pertinent discovery that gift-exchange matching is, FYI, a goddamn nightmare.
I busted my ass trying to make this thing run smoothly, and the universe reached out and pushed glassware off of the table while making eye contact with me over and over again. Unfortunately, I am not emotionally stable enough a person to pour the kind of work and energy and stress that I dedicated to this into a project only to have the powers that be spit in my face repeatedly.
If someone else wants to fight God next time, more power to them! I’ll signal-boost as much as I can (or just give them this probably-cursed sideblog, if they hate themselves and/or want it), but I’m afraid I will definitely not be putting myself through this again. XD